Civic Duty
by aikakone
Summary: After a plague has made most of humanity infertile, all able-bodied adults must participate in breeding programs. Jo Martinez lost her old partner, Sean Moore, and is now paired with Henry Morgan, a kind if peculiar man with a direct connection to the dictator Adam and the cause of the infertility plague. [Tumblr ask box fic, dystopian sci-fi AU, some language]
1. Chapter 1

Jo Martinez sits beside Henry Morgan on the gurney in the stark white lab. She has learned to work with Henry after her initial impression that she did not want him to be her assigned partner at all. After her last partner, Sean, died in the most recent reproductive riots, the officials found Henry for her, but Jo has been too busy grieving to do her civic duty.

The Department of Reproduction doesn't care about emotions or grief. They care that the human population is dying with most adults being effectively sterile. As sterile as the room Jo founds herself in now with her government-mandated partner.

Because of the plague killing almost all the babies, it doesn't matter that Jo is a woman in her 30s. As long as she is still able to ovulate and hasn't gone into menopause, she is required to produce children with Henry. The Department of Reproduction knows that Jo and Henry are genetically compatible from the samples they had on file for her, and they have great hopes for their combined success.

Henry Morgan is a wild card, though. His genetic samples had been erased from the system after he'd been paired with her. No one really knows his origins, which is a near impossibility in their dwindling society. There seems to be few personal mysteries any more since the one mystery everyone focuses on is why everyone is dying around them.

Henry puts his hand over Jo's in a gentlemanly way. "I am sorry if this question will embarrass you. These are trying times. Do you want to do this medically or…?"

The pause that fills the room references whether or not they will exchange body fluids. She had with Sean. They had fallen in love despite the fact that most mandated reproduction partners don't and that doing so is very much discouraged. For most of the matched pairs, it is just a citizen's responsibility with no emotion. Unfortunately, the sum of her and Sean's emotions did not amount to them having any children together or keeping him alive and safe from the riots.

Jo sighs. They would be watched either way, but old-fashioned procreation versus medically-assisted implantation of an embryo was slightly more private. While Henry is strange, he also appears to be kind. She decides to take a chance on his kindness.

"Or," she says at last minimally. It's a decision at least. It's something.


	2. Chapter 2

"Jo, look at me," Henry says with his hands on her face like it all matters. Like anything they do in this world will make a difference. The babies still die and people are just getting older, like falling into the abyss.

"Jo, look into my eyes," he repeats, and Jo looks at him. Really looks.

It's not that she doesn't know what a naked Henry Morgan looks like. They've been a matched pair for months now without any results. She knows a naked Henry, but only in the most clinical way possible. His eyes, though, they are different. She was right that he was kind, and she takes solace in that color of mossy earth that can't decide if it's green or brown.

"Henry, I can't," she says, barely moving her lips.

Perhaps if she is quiet enough, the observers won't hear her. They are always being watched, though, especially now. Every ovulation is an act of science, and every time they have sex it makes her feel like an angry stranger with the one person she realized she needs to trust most in this god-forsaken world.

"I know," he replies softly with his lips close to hers, breathing in her words before they can escape to the others.

They aren't lovers. That would imply freedom to care about him more than just a duty. If they were lovers, he could hold her when they're done, kiss the tears away if she ever let them show, and plant his lips on her temple in the way of small caressing kisses. He could do that for her.

But that, no, that is not allowed here because it is extraneous and not useful the doctors say. Jo doesn't understand that. Before the plague that's how many families had their babies.

There is that one thing that Jo keeps hidden in her heart of hearts. She could tell Henry if she dared, and she knows he'd keep her secret. She's not sure how she knows, but she does.

She doesn't want to have children. She just doesn't. She resents her body being used against her and the resulting lack of choice. Henry doesn't have a choice, either.

"Morgan, move it like you mean it," Mike Hanson, their project counselor, says near them with his hand on a clipboard and the other poised to take notes. Hanson and his partner Karen have come out of the genetic lottery as winners with two boys for their efforts. Somehow that means he gets to rule over her and Henry's reproductive rights.

Henry moves, and Jo feels him inside her. She feels the power in his hips when he thrusts, and she knows the way their sweat-slick abdomens can fit together making them sometimes feel like one being. But it is never enough.

Hanson tells Henry to adjust the angle of her pelvis or to aim for certain parts in her that she's not even sure exist. Jo hates reproductive intercourse with Henry. Hates it.

Sometimes she would just love to have a good fuck. She remembers fucking. When sex was fun, awkward, mildly entertaining, messy and not a requirement of responsible citizens. She'll probably never get fucked again, and that saddens Jo. When she is no longer ovulating, she won't be of use to her society while the men will be paired with women for as long as they can make a viable sperm count.

Henry holds her at her hips and thrusts deeply one more time. Tiny beads of sweat that Jo can almost count one by one dot his forehead as he spills into her.

Before they could possibly enjoy the afterglow like a resonating cadence in music, Mike Hanson pulls Henry away from her and rips off the little sticky data monitors from his body. Morgan slaps Hanson's hand away and glowers at him.

Hanson's assistant Lucas Wahl is taking all Jo's vital signs, too, right there on the table where she and Henry have just been. The procedure is impersonal and invasive, and she isn't given the privacy of a gown to cover herself.

"Okay, done," Hanson declares. "Take your supplements and come back here tomorrow at one o'clock."

Neither Jo nor Henry speak. She's afraid she'd slay Hanson with her sharp tongue if given the chance. She gets up and walks off to the showers, ready to wash the thought of this day away.

Jo is surprised, moments later, when she feels fingertips at her elbow touching her tentatively. Elbows are two of the least private parts of the human anatomy, and yet when she turns to see that it is Henry, she feels touched more intimately than when his penis was in her vagina.

"You forgot your supplements," he says as explanation, offering her the cup.

"Thank you," Jo replies as she takes the cup from him, letting the skin contact linger on his microseconds too long.

"Get some rest, Jo. We'll do better tomorrow," he says with a soft encouraging smile before he backs out of her personal space.

Tomorrow is the one thing they can't count on yet. Not if Jo and the other women can't have children.

She slams back the pills and casts away the small plastic dose up. The crumpled refuse lands on the floor near the trash can, but she ignores it for the shower.


	3. Chapter 3

"You look different with clothes on."

Henry jumps at the sound of Jo's voice. He knows her voice, but he didn't expect to see her. Not in public like this where he feels so exposed.

She stands away from him, a safe distance. A distance like they don't both know what it feels like to have him inside her. This is awkward, and it's not even awkward the same way it can be for lovers who've had a bad break up. It's just what modern life has brought them to.

Jo leans toward him, stretching out her hand to tug gently on the tail of his scarf.

"Nice touch," she says, and he laughs self-consciously. For some dumb reason, the small bit of attention makes him feel like a blushing boy.

He coughs to break the tension that has suddenly gripped him. "I do believe this is the first time I've seen you in public, Miss Martinez."

She sits down on the same bench he occupies, but she sits with space between them like they are strangers. They still very much are.

"I needed a walk," Jo tells him as she looks off at the barricades in the distance.

"I came to eat lunch," he says, holding up his partially eaten sandwich as evidence.

She glances at him and then looks away, staring intently again at the barricade. Henry remembers it was the site of the last big riot for reproductive freedom. Many people were killed there, and it was shortly afterward that he became Jo's assigned reproductive partner.

"Did you lose someone in the riots?" he asks abruptly as an idea occurs to him, and her head snaps back to look at him.

"Sean," she replies, giving him so much emotion in that one word, yet none of the details.

Jo says nothing else, so he doesn't press. Instead, Henry quietly finishes his sandwich and thinks about the fertility supplements that they are all supposed to be taking. Everything they consume is supposed to bring them fresh life, but it doesn't quite achieve that. Even the best attempts at helping human life have met with failures, and Henry knows that fact quite well.

Henry does what he never does when he's in the Reproductive Center, and he takes the time to look at Jo Martinez. For just this once he can do it without the prying eyes and censure of others. For an unobstructed moment she's there with clothes on like they're both civilized people who could exchange pleasantries about the weather if they knew how to talk to each other like that. As he considers her high cheekbones and shapely mouth, he realizes she's beautiful, and the fact that it's taken him so long to notice is disheartening. Henry used to be quite the connoisseur of beautiful women.

"I must bid you adieu, Miss Martinez," he says as he stands to go.

"Is my company too exciting for you?" Jo asks, a rare light in her eyes.

"You are always good company," he replies politely, "but you know Adam's rules about socialization."

Her face hides many thoughts that she has about Adam's rules, and Henry can almost interpret them as they quickly go by in her microexpressions.

"Good day, Henry," Jo tells him, thus ending their time together.

* * *

When he walks away from her, he does it for their protection. Adam can't know that he has grown to care for his partner. It's not romance or love, exactly, but love in that particular sense doesn't seem to exist any more. What he feels is consideration that she has become valuable and important to him.

Jo is someone he thinks about even when he shouldn't. That truly surprises him. The only other person in that category is the one person that none of the others can ever know about, his son Abraham.

Henry hasn't noticed that Jo has followed him. That's why his guard is down when he receives a phone call from Abe. He speaks briefly to his son, but his fatherly care stumbles out of his mouth like a drunk leaving a bar. It's raw and real. He should work harder to contain it.

That's why he's confronted by a very angry Jo when he emerges from the shadows after his phone call ends. The face he thought was soft and beautiful hours, even minutes, ago is now harsh and unforgiving.

"You have a son?" she demands in a hiss. "Why are you in the Program if you have a son?"

"It's a long story," he replies, his attempt at a charming smile failing. Then he explains very quietly as if to keep this intimate detail under the skin, "He's not my biological son. He's a war orphan. I don't think I can have children."

Jo looks as if she's about to explode, but she holds her anger in check and doesn't let it go free. "Of course, you have a problem conceiving children. We all do. That's what the plague did. That's why we're in the Program together."

"No, I…" He stops. "There's a different reason. I've never been able to have children, and I'm a lot older than I look."

Henry doesn't tell her that he was alive long before the plague, when people sitting on a bench together in the park as they had done together earlier was a prelude to a date. He doesn't tell Jo that he secretly worries that the plague was all his fault.

There is a cosmic joke in play that will allow him to be immortal while every single person around him will die with no new generations to follow. He won't even be able to take suicide as an out because he will return. Henry knows because he's tried. Henry knows because he's died many times, including once in the riots that took Jo's Sean.

He can't face the guilt knowing the damage his well-intentioned mistakes have brought into this world. He can't look her in the eyes and confess his guilt about hurting her personally. Because really, the whole reason she and the rest of the women are in this breeding program is because of him, even if no one else but Adam knows it.

So he doesn't tell her. Henry does the cowardly thing that he never thought he would do with Jo Martinez. He flees.


	4. Chapter 4

The next time Jo sees Henry at their regularly scheduled appointment, she's seething with anger and can barely look him in the eye. They undress for their sanitary showers and afterward Lucas applies the sensors to their body while Hanson looks on with his usual judgmental stare. Then they are on the table, and they begin.

They go through the motions methodically until Jo's patience breaks. She practically throws Henry off of her in disgust. She is not going to play nice today to make their day in the Program easier.

"Getting a little feisty there, Martinez?" Hanson comments.

"This isn't working!" she says through clenched teeth. "What about _in vitro_? Is it too late to try that?"

"We'd probably need to give Henry something for ye olde spank bank," Lucas says with vague hand motions as he thinks of it. "Then you'd get the needles. Big ones."

"Just what I always wanted," Jo says sarcastically.

Mike Hanson looks at his watch like he's really keeping track of how things go. Then he speaks to them with his most authoritative voice. "You two have to figure out how to work together. If you don't, there is a process for reassignment, but let's remember that the older you get Martinez, the fewer choices you have."

"Yes, thank you for that reminder that I'm just meat, Hanson," she says to the man whose hair always looks perfect. Sometimes she hates that perfect hair.

Hanson doesn't look bothered by her bile. Instead he says, "I'm going to give you two an hour to figure this out. Eat your lunch, and get it sorted. Do you understand me?"

"Absolutely," Henry finally says, not looking at either him or Jo.

Morgan retrieves a robe for himself and brings one to Jo so she can have some modesty. They both wear slippers and take their drinks and sandwiches up to the roof of the Reproductive Center where they have had their appointments for nearly nine months. They could have created one new human life by now if fate had not been so cruel.

* * *

On the roof they are silent for many minutes. Jo eats viciously as she thinks about what has been bothering her about Henry Morgan. She tears at her sandwich in a way that is meant to intimidate, and it appears to work. He's not saying anything.

When Jo is finally ready, her words are sharp and cold. "Explain to me one thing, Henry. If you are personally sterile, how did you pass the physical to be part of the Program? Are you using me for some sick game?"

"Adam makes me," he finally says. "It's not about you."

"Adam? Makes _you_? Adam is too busy running the country to worry about the rest of us," she says. "So maybe it's not about _you_, Henry!"

"You would like to think so, wouldn't you?" he says with a tone that asserts what he said is true despite that fact that it shouldn't be. "Any woman who is paired with me would be caught in the crossfire. You are just the unlucky one who has had to deal with it."

"Can you at least tell me why?" she asks.

"Adam and I have a long history. I stole from him, and he has decided that he'll torture me for it as long as I live. It will be a very long time," Henry sighs.

"What did you steal?" she asks suspiciously.

"His wife," Henry reluctantly says in a far away tone. Though Jo thinks that can't be even remotely true, Henry's demeanor tells her it is.

"Abigail was my research assistant a long time ago. I fell in love with her even though she was off-limits. It was not my finest moment," he admits. "I thought I was a moral man who wouldn't hurt another person because of his own selfishness. It seems I am not."

Jo realizes she doesn't know Henry Morgan all that well. The unsettling first impression she had of him might be more accurate than she originally imagined. She doesn't leave the roof, but she walks away from him to give herself time to think. He waits from his side of the roof for a while without interrupting her solitude.

When he's had enough, Henry stalks toward her. "The thing I don't understand is why you are suddenly so angry with me. Nothing has changed for you about the Program or the terms of our public service. Nothing is different."

Jo crosses her arms over her chest. She bares her teeth in an almost feral manner. Leaning toward him to protect her words from drifting in the air, she says, "It's the Program. I don't want children. I never have."

Henry's face softens to her. "We are both stuck in the roles we must play."

"And we can't change that, can we?" she says as she tucks some of the wayward strands of her hair behind her ear.

"I'm working on it," he says with the softest whisper she's ever heard.

She sees in him the first hint of wildness peaking out of the cracks in his façade. Henry Morgan is always so calm and collected. Even when he has an orgasm, he is self-contained, but this time Jo wants to press Henry until he breaks.

"So what were you researching in the lab, Dr. Morgan?" Jo asks curiously.

Henry runs his hand across his nape self-consciously. "The medical applications of nanotechnology."

Jo had assumed Henry to be intelligent, but that was not the job she would have imagined for him. Now she wonders how it fits together with the current situation.

"Were you trying to cure the infertility?" she asks.

"Let's just say infertility wasn't the problem then that it is now," Henry says evasively. "I was doing something else."

"That's true," she remembers. "Infertility didn't become a problem until after the plague."

He changes subjects and says, "Jo, I know you don't trust me completely, but we can still help each other. I know I can't have children despite all the positive health scans I've undergone. If you don't want any, either, then we are not working at cross purposes."

"Don't you get it? I don't want to be forced into this Program. Where is my choice!"

"I'm sorry," Henry says with eyes closed in understanding. "That's just not what we're given. You lost Sean in hopes of a choice!"

"Don't you dare talk to me about Sean! You never knew him," Jo growls. She strides to a different corner of the rooftop just to get away from Henry and his words.

Henry catches up to her. "Sometimes a revolution has to be fought from within using stealth instead of from the outside with a fist. Give me time. Please."

Jo Martinez has always been the kind of woman to fight with her fists. Though she is still angry, she realizes that maybe for now it is better to play the system against itself. As far as she can tell, it won't make her immediate situation any worse. Sometimes the devil you knew was better than the devil you didn't.

"Time will be up soon," Henry announces as he indicates a clock tower high on one of the other buildings across the city. A minute or two ticks away with the silence oppressive between them.

"I will continue to work with you," Jo says, "but let's make one thing clear. I will not be used."

"No, of course not," he agrees, relieved with the cessation of hostilities.

"One more thing," Jo says. "How can I contact you if I need you?"

"You know that's not a good idea," Henry replies. "You might draw too much attention from Adam."

Jo smiles wryly. "Sometimes a person has to take a risk. From what you've told me, you're already familiar with those."

It is his turn to consider her words, and the face that he guards in the lab flows with expression. At last he tells her, "My son, Abraham, owns a bar on 17th call the Antiquarian. If you ever need me, find him."

"Well then," Jo declares after a deep breath, "we have an understanding. Now I think it's time to go have sex."


	5. Chapter 5

Henry stares at the ceiling as if to see through it to the floor above his head. The people in Abe's bar gather to remember the reproductive riots a year ago that were the bloodiest in recent history and took several people's lives. Henry's thoughts flit quickly to Jo Martinez and her lover Sean, who died in the riot.

He didn't know Sean Moore then, but in the last year Henry has continually searched his memory for any scrap that might have belonged to him on that shared night. Maybe they died there together. Only Henry didn't stay dead because he can't, and that is one problem he must solve.

His communication device beeps, and he scrambles to the corner monitor where Joanna Reece waits to speak to him. She is the virologist who works with him in secret from time to time to help solve the nanobot problem that plagues him.

"Greetings, Joanna," he says as he looks at her dark face and bright eyes.

He'd had a few physical dalliances with her in times past after Abigail was killed, but it never got in the way of their work. She was also old enough that he could justify enjoying himself without having to produce a phantom child when their efforts were done.

"Henry, I'm sending the most recent data over to you via courier. I might have something you can use to disable the nanobots, but I'm not sure. Destroy the packet after you've committed the information to memory," she warns.

"Perhaps, I will throw it into the bonfire in the middle of the square," he says half-jokingly.

It is a reference to one of the ways the people were remembering the anniversary of the reproductive riots. So far the police haven't cracked down on it, but Henry believes it is only a matter of time until they do.

"Do you really think this will change the nanobot trigger?" he asks, not daring to hope for the solution to the problem this time.

"With the knowledge I have, yes, it should help," she says as she rubs her forehead in frustration. "Henry, I don't know why you haven't been able to figure out what Adam did to your nanotech. This is supposed to be your area of expertise. You should have all the tools to solve the problem."

Reece isn't wrong, but it's a well-worn path they trod.

"I should, but I still can't figure out the mutation. As you are fully aware, my access to a lab is severely limited," he says with a thumb pointing over his shoulder to Abe's basement store room around him.

"If I could get into a lab," Henry continues, "I might be able to solve it, but you know Adam would never let me in to a government facility. So I do what I can, and I ask favors." He finishes with a significant look at her in reference to favors.

"I may not be able to give you any more favors for a while. Adam's private investigators have been asking questions in other offices near me. I don't want to give him a chance to look at mine. I have people to protect," she says.

"Thank you, Joanna. I understand," he says.

Above Henry's head a small cheer erupts in the bar about whatever match they are watching on TV. It provides a pleasant distraction on the anniversary of the last significant riots, and people are eager not to think of their lives.

"I must go, Henry. Contact me only if it is necessity," Reece tells him.

He closes the video call and waits again, alone but observing the world above from his hiding place below it.

* * *

Henry comes up to the bar minutes later when Abe tells him to bring up a case of cheap beer. It is an easy request to follow since he should be available to the courier at any time. He is setting out the drinks when Jo Martinez walks in.

She's taken to wearing a scarf, and she looks around the bar as she stands just inside the doorway. Henry feels like prey for a moment because Jo gives off the air of a predator who has memorized all the people in the room and evaluated them for their threat level. Maybe she has. Henry only knows minimal detail about the woman's life.

Her eyes eventually lock on his, and he nods to her in acknowledgement. Jo walks over to the bar with deliberate calm, projecting a casual air. Henry knows to treat her like a valued customer first. Abe would have nothing less in the Antiquarian, and it helps Henry blend in.

"What may I get for you?" he asks as he puts a towel over his arm.

As a woman who is in the state-sponsored breeding program, Jo's choices of approved beverages are severely limited, but she tells Henry what she wants. He makes short work of putting it together and is polite and professionally detached while he does it.

Abraham Morgan comes in from the small kitchen with a tray of light foods for a table of men surrounding the TV and watching the match. After he finishes, he comes to Jo to give his personal welcome to the Antiquarian. Abe prides himself that he knows all his regular customers.

"Welcome!" Abe says as he tries to charm Jo. Henry moves away from them so he can see Jo's reaction to his son.

Abe looks like he could be Henry's own father or uncle. He is a vibrant man in his 50s, and Henry looks at him through Jo's eyes. He wonders what she thinks of his son. Would she remember that he had told her he was older than he looked? Jo will have questions.

Abe continues speaking to Jo with the charm he has perfected. She looks at him oddly and then smiles at him with the type of unguarded expression Henry has never seen on her face before. He could call it pure because it is absent of the normal shields she usually wears.

"Your drink," Henry says as he places it in front of Jo and then rubs the counter to get out an invisible spot. "Did you need to speak to me?"

Jo sips her drink, her eyes flicking to the game on screen. After she swallows, Jo tells Henry, "I came here to remember Sean. It's not for you."

"I'm sorry," he says, stepping back because he has bar errands to run and because he has been presumptuous.

They have had their monthly sessions at the Reproductive Center with no results. Mike Hanson and Lucas Wahl still monitor their every move, but the sessions seem better now that he and Jo have an understanding. He just wishes he had more to share with her, something that will bring them closer to a solution to the infertility problem.

Henry walks toward the rowdy sport fans and picks up their bottles for recycling. As he glances at the TV an urgent news break interrupts the match. An arrest has been made for another failed attempt at Adam's life the week before. On the screen underneath the live reporter is a news ticker with the details of a new wave of mass miscarriages that have hit the capital city.

As Henry walks back to the bar, he catches Jo intently watching the newscast. As she does so, she toys with a coin in her fingers. Her act of fidgeting makes Henry curious.

"What's on your mind?" he asks as he makes a show of checking her drink.

"Have you ever noticed that after every assassination attempt there is almost always a wave of miscarriages? It happens too regularly, but I can't pinpoint the reason why," she says. Her eyes are far off as she's thinking her way around the problem.

"How did you notice that?" Henry asks, keeping his voice calm and in control.

"The time before this, my neighbor Marcy was pregnant. She lost the baby right after someone tried to kill Adam. I became curious, so I looked at the newspaper. When one thing happens, the other soon follows. It's like the two events are connected somehow," Jo says.

Henry knows the truth, but he doesn't tell Jo what he knows. He can't do it yet. He'll let her think on it for a while like a dog gnawing a bone. If he drops enough hints, he might guide her to the right place.

"How far back have you looked?" he quietly asks her. Then he thinks of a new question. "What do you do for a living, Jo?"

She smiles softly, hiding her secret. She had dreams once of being a police officer. It seemed like such noble work, but she could not get into the police. They are all in the pocket of Adam just as much as the military is, and Jo won't be involved in anything that is corrupt.

"I am a private investigator," she says. "I am professionally curious."

"I can respect that," Henry returns. "I was a scientist."

She nods, and then she is distracted by a new person who enters Abe's bar, making a beeline straight to Henry.

"Sign for the package," the courier tells Henry efficiently.

Henry swiftly takes it, eager to learn what Joanna has sent him. H plays it cool as he can and disappears downstairs to lock it away into the concealed safe. Then he reminds himself that Reece has told him to destroy the contents as soon as he has memorized them.

Though he was not gone long, Abe is making charming conversation with Jo again when Henry returns. She smiles at him in a way that Henry has not often seen. Even in dark times, Abe has the ability to bring out the best in people.

As the night winds down, Jo remains. Henry isn't sure why she's still there, but the fact that she stays prickles under his skin and makes him not able to relax. Jo is his partner of a sort, though, and he could trust her more if he let himself.

He puts one last drink down in front of her and whispers quietly, "The curfew will be in effect soon. I want to show you something before you go."

Jo nods her understanding before asking in a slightly loud voice. "Where is the bathroom in this place?"

Henry tells her the answer in the same too loud way, and she gets up from the bar and wanders off clutching her stomach as if she is sick or something more. Before she can make it to the public facilities, he finds her in the darkness and pulls her to a door in the shadows. Together they descend into the darkness until she is standing in front of the small lab Henry has fashioned in the farthest reaches of the basement store room.

"What is this, Henry?" Jo asks.

"It is the truth. Some of it anyway," he answers.

Then Dr. Henry Morgan starts to give Jo pieces of his life that he has not shared yet. It's not everything, but it's enough to keep her busy until it's time for her to leave in compliance with the curfew.


	6. Chapter 6

Jo believes she knows Henry by now. They've been together for over a year. She knows how his hands feel on her skin, and she knows the size of his erection and just how he moves his hips. Jo knows, too, the certain way his eyes become veiled when he tries to hide secrets from her, and he is a man with many secrets.

One of his secrets is Joanna Reece. It was one name she got from him when they talked in the basement of the Antiquarian about some of his efforts to combat the infertility. Jo's innate curiosity burns within her because there is another person out there who knows Henry even better than she does. So she seeks out Reece because Henry can't do it himself, and Jo really wants to know.

Jo arrives at the virologist's office in the government complex and waits for her appointment. The normal propaganda covers the walls, and it feels sterile. Somehow, that is rather fitting.

When it is time for her appointment one of the junior staff members walks Jo back to a staff-only area where Reece is having a discussion with another scientist. Joanna Reece is an elegant black woman who clearly treats her staff well and behaves with queenly comportment. Jo is not sure something like that can be learned. Certainly, no one in her neighborhood ever behaved like that when she was growing up.

"Miss Reece?" Jo asks. "Thank you for taking the time to see me. Is there anywhere we can speak privately?"

Reece walks ahead of her, graceful in high heels, and shows Jo her office. Jo goes in and looks for something in her purse while Joanna takes her place behind the desk.

"Excuse me, please. I just need to check my makeup," Jo explains as she takes out a compact mirror.

She presses a button on it and looks to various parts of the room, sweeping everything in detail. Nodding, she presses a button again and then leaves the open compact on Reece's desk.

"I've just sent a disruption signal to any bugs in the room. It won't last long, and it will appear to anyone surveillance like a satellite glitch. Let's make this fast, shall we?" Jo says to the point. "I'm here about Henry Morgan. Do you know what he's working on?"

"I do, but how do I know I can trust you?" Reece asks.

"I am his partner at the Reproductive Center. He and I have common goals as I believe you do," Jo says, passing her citizen's badge over to Reece.

"So you are," Reece says before handing the badge back. "Do you understand nanotechnology, Miss Martinez?"

"Only the basics. It isn't my field. Tell me simple, and tell me fast," she says, reminding Reece of their need for urgency.

"Nanobots can repair the body, and some scientists thought they were the cure for all the ails of the future. Henry was working on that a long time ago because he believed in it. This was during a time when cancers and autoimmune diseases were the ones that people feared most."

Reece doesn't have to say that it's the potential extinction of humanity that makes people fear most now.

"So would I be correct in assuming that he got the nanotechnology to work? No one actually talks about nanotech any more. My grandfather might have mentioned it as a big thing when he was a kid, but no one has worried about it since the plague," Jo said.

"Exactly. Let me ask _you_ a question, Miss Martinez."

"Jo, please," she corrects.

"Jo. Do you know how old Henry is? Not how old he looks but how old he _is_," Reece says.

"I don't, no," she admits. "I haven't asked him, and he hasn't volunteered. He did hint that he's older than he looks. And then there's Abe, who he claims is his son, so the pieces don't fit," Jo says.

Jo has been chewing on that nugget of information since she met Abe. It was true the charming man had been a war orphan, but it just wasn't the war Jo expected it to have been.

"I have people I'm protecting, Jo, and I need to know that you'll keep my secrets if I share with you some of Henry's," Reece says.

"I'm a private investigator. I'm trying to help Henry when I can. If we could find a way to work together and end the plague, that would be best. But I'm not a doctor."

"I think if you could find a way to end the plague, you could have a way to end Henry himself," Joanna says softly.

"What do you mean?" Jo demands because she knows Reece has let something important slip.

Shaking her head, Reece says, "That is one secret I can not tell you. Not because I don't know. I do. Because that knowledge and burden belongs to Henry. I won't take the guilt away from him."

"Guilt? What guilt?" Jo asks in confusion.

"He was there at the beginning of the infertility plague. I love Henry. He is kind and brilliant. But he is not a god, and he has failed often and failed well. The reason we are in this damned situation because of something he did, and he knows it," Reece says.

"But what did he do?" Jo asks, not satisfied with the hints she is getting.

Reece stands up from her desk and does not answer Jo. "I think you should go now. If you're a good investigator, you should look into any documentation in the national library about the last instances of cancer research and nanotechnology before the plague began. There might still be some pieces that haven't been scrubbed from public record."

Jo has excellent focus on her job, but a stupid question comes to her as she takes in the whole of Joanna Reece. She resents her own mind for thinking of it, but she asks anyway.

"You were lovers, weren't you? Not just center partners like we are."

"Yes, we were for a while," Reece admits.

Jo accepts that with a nod. It reaffirms her sense about other people. She is still further curious, though it is perhaps better left alone.

"Was he any good when he wasn't so… choreographed?"

Reece laughs heartily. "Yes, as a matter of fact, he was a creative lover. But I wouldn't take him back. Water under the bridge. One bit of unsolicited advice, Miss Martinez. Don't fall in love with him."

Jo screws up her face like she's been offended. "Me and Henry? Not hardly! I loved and lost once. It was enough."

"Good. Henry's not a bad man, but it won't come to a good end. I'm sorry," she says as she escorts Jo away from her office.


	7. Chapter 7

While Jo is busy doing research, the regular appointments with Henry at the Reproductive Center continue. As always, Hanson and his assistant Lucas are their caretakers. Hanson is a skilled and capable leader, but he frequently overlooks the resource he has in Lucas Wahl. Jo decides she needs help from someone who can better explain the science side of nanotechnology to her, so that makes her pay more attention to Lucas when it comes time to remove the diagnostic monitors.

"Hi, Lucas," she says in what she hopes is a warm voice.

While he is working with her naked body, he avoids eye contact. The fact that she has spoken to him causes him to flinch. He shyly looks at her eyes, and she smiles.

"Miss Martinez," he says with his voice doing the cute cracking thing that comes from uncertainty.

"You've been helping me a long time. How did you start working at the Reproductive Center? Have you always been interested in medicine and the sciences?" she asks in a way that she hopes in conversational.

Jo doesn't know Lucas Wahl very well yet, but she's going to change that. She works on emanating emotional warmth though she is still nude. Lucas has seen her all through the sex act for well over a year, so nothing about her person should surprise him. She doesn't know if his personal preferences lean toward her or Henry, or he just be open minded enough to like them both. He's a tall enigma.

Unfortunately, he doesn't have time to answer because Hanson immediately snaps at him to prepare for the next pair. It's a disappointment that she can't charm him into conversation, but she does hear a passing comment that Lucas can't go to his favorite club after work if he doesn't get the work done. Jo files the knowledge in her mind because she definitely plans on stalking him later.

She passes Henry on the way to the sanitary showers and says, "Good session today, Henry."

"Thank you," he comments, surprised at her apparent upbeat mood.

If he had a sex scorecard, he would have gotten an A+ for perfect reproductive sex. But Henry never fucks. To Reece back in the day maybe, but not here and now with her. That fact that Jo even notices or cares sometimes irritates her because it can be very hard to compartmentalize.

"Why were you talking to Lucas back there?" he asks, and Jo can tell that Henry is nosy and perhaps a little jealous.

"He was there, and he takes care of me every session. Would you have me ignore him and be rude? Maybe I am trying to make the best of things," she says. She steps closer and drops her voice, "Or maybe I am trying to operate from the inside just like we spoke about."

At a normal volume level, she says, "There is nothing wrong with me talking to Lucas. He seems like a nice guy. Smarter than he looks, I think, and I need his help even if you don't."

"Well, I can't determine who your friends are," Henry grants dubiously.

"That's right. You can't. And maybe you and I will be friends one day when the secrets are behind us," she says magnanimously.

"I doubt that," he says quickly. "You might not like me very much when you know the real me."

Henry's eyes smolder with the intensity Jo has seen him take a few times. She has learned enough to recognize it is a symptom of the secrets he carries.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Henry. We are nothing if not faithful," Jo says kindly before she walks ahead of him to take her shower in the women's locker room.

* * *

Lucas Wahl is not an elegant dancer. His limbs are too long and gangly for that. What he lacks in restrained grace, he makes up for in easy enthusiasm. Jo is thankful for it because that makes him easier to spot when she enters the House of Payne.

It is the last hour before the curfew settles in, and people are dancing like their lives are free of Adam's control. Maybe for the time they dance they can set aside their worries. Jo isn't sure she can. She remembers a time when dancing was a clothed prelude to sex, and instead sex now is just a duty.

Jo wrestles with that dichotomy. Sex could be wonderful, but it stopped being that way for her when it became work. Some people can still manage to wrangle the pleasure and pain out of it, but she is not one of them.

It is easy to think of the dual aspect of pleasure and pain when the club's owner makes her appearance to the crowd. Iona Payne is a woman fully possessed of herself. Other people know it, and Jo recognizes her power.

To the sexual arts, Iona is a master with a reputation that precedes her. She would be a gourmet chef to a starving man. Her skill is great, and her body is proudly on display as she works the crowd of her club. Jo has easily been much more naked in front of Henry or Hanson or Lucas, but never has she looked as confident as Iona.

As Iona charms her customers, Jo takes the chance to slide next to Lucas. He looks surprised to see her standing beside him. Smoothly, Jo offers, "Let me buy you a drink."

"Okay," he replies, clearly surprised at her interest.

He signals to the bartender what he wants, and then Lucas follows Jo to a booth with as much privacy as can be afforded in the club.

"I confess I wanted to talk to you earlier today," Jo says with an added air of false shyness. "We don't get enough time to talk in the Center, and I heard Hanson saying you would be here tonight."

"You came here looking for me?" he asks before he tastes his drink.

She nods and bats her eyelashes a little. "Is that so hard to imagine?"

Then she begins to work him and gain his trust. Jo knows people. She doesn't always like people, but she understands the human condition. She asks him the right kind of questions so he will talk about himself. For most people, that is the favorite subject matter and it takes little to keep them going.

"Hey, Lucas," Jo says casually. "You're really smart. Could you help me understand something? Do you remember when there was the research into nanotechnology as a cure for most diseases? How did that actually work?"

He puts the drink down, his third by then. It's close to curfew, but not so close that Jo can't get some information out of him if he's still coherent enough.

"Microscopic robots. They'd go into the broken cells and fix them," he says. "They would fix cancer cells from spawning out of control."

Lucas leans in like he's really interested in talking about it now that Jo has got him started. "It was a great concept because the nanobots… Some people called them nanites. Same thing. They would use damaged or malignant cells as their fuel while they supported the health and structure of good cells. If you've got a cancerous tumor, that was one way to make it go away without surgery. It was a really clever idea."

Jo thinks about it. She believes she has it, but she wants to hear it again from Lucas to be sure.

"So in theory, the nanobots could use other biological material to repair cells?"

"Yes, exactly!" he replies, pointing excitedly with his drink. "The nanotech research was basically abandoned when the plague hit, though, so no one knows what it could have been."

Jo takes his drink from his hand and immediately downs it as she tries to understand. She flags another drink from the server and explains her behavior with a laugh, "Science really makes me thirsty."

Then she leans back in the dark because she believes she's puzzled the pieces out. By some mechanism she doesn't understand, the nanobots repair Adam because no one can be that lucky after so many attempts on his life. It's an intuitive leap, but one she trusts. She wouldn't be a good investigator without it.

"Thank you, Lucas. I should go settle the bill and head out before the curfew. I'll see you at the appointment tomorrow. Okay?" she asks with her hand lightly on his shoulder.

"See you there," he says, saluting her with the most recent drink she has bought for him. "Maybe we could do this again sometime? It was nice."

"Yes, maybe," Jo says.

Then she gets out of there so she can figure out what to do next. No, that's not it. She needs to talk to Henry.


	8. Chapter 8

The next day, Jo is there eagerly at the Reproductive Center. She never expected she would ever feel that way about going to the Center, but she needs to talk to Henry to make sense of all that she has learned from her research and science explanations with Lucas.

Unfortunately, Henry is unavailable. He is a man going through the motions as he must, and he moves it like he means it, as Hanson is often wont to say. They can't really talk during the act, though Jo tells him between gasps that she wants to talk. When the sex is done, Hanson takes Henry away, and Lucas steals glances at Jo as he records her vitals and removes the sensors from her skin.

Jo is frustrated as if the world is conspiring against her to make it so she can't talk to Henry. She takes comfort that she knows of the Antiquarian, but she doesn't want to use the bar if she doesn't have to. For one, she doesn't want to appear too much a creature of habit.

To Lucas in front of her, she finally relents to talk. "Let me guess. I look different with my clothes on."

He laughs uneasily. "I didn't know if you'd acknowledge seeing me last night."

"I wouldn't want to get you in trouble," she says with practiced sweetness. It's true in a way. It is another case in the game of the devil she knew.

When she looks over to where Henry has been, he is gone completely, not just unavailable for talking. "What happened to Henry?"

Lucas juts his chin to indicate the missing man and the direction he has gone. "Adam called for him this morning. Wanted him to come to the Presidential Palace as soon as he was done with his reproductive session."

"Ah. So even when doing one's civic duty," she says with a hand wave to the invisible Adam, "one can't avoid one's civic duty."

Jo uses a flourish to show herself, Lucas and the room around them. He smiles his agreement and teases her use of formal language. Then Hanson returns, and their moment of personal levity is shut down. Jo departs for the sanitary showers, all the while trying to think of a new plan to find Henry.

* * *

She shows up at Abe's bar eight days later. Jo figures that eight days is enough time to pass so that it might not seem suspicious or like a regular visit because of Henry. She should not show any personal connection to the man beyond their roles in the reproductive drama of their society.

When she steps into the Antiquarian, she takes stock of everyone there. It's her way to assess the situations she's in and make immediate safety judgments. Her sense of place and purpose has saved her skin many times. The one thing Jo does not see when she enters the bar is Henry. He is absolutely nowhere.

She loiters a while and makes the polite small talk with other customers. She waits and waits longer. It is after Abe fills her drink for the fourth or fifth time that he pauses to really talk to her.

"I can't give you hard alcohol. As a potential mother, you know the restrictions. So I don't think you're really here for a drink," he says. Then he makes a show of being a simple bartender polishing his glasses and cleaning his bar.

"Where's Henry?" she asks as she holds up the bowl of peanuts and noisily shakes them like she wants more. She hopes that if there are any listening devices around she has just made enough static interference to prevent clear surveillance.

"Let me get you some more of those," Abe says cheerily, taking the bowl from her hand. He refills them and sets the peanuts beside her. In a very quiet tone, he says, "Still with Adam at the palace. I'm not sure why."

"Do you know Adam's secret, too?" she asks. Because Abe is Henry's closest confidant and quite possibly his son, she assumes he must know.

"What secret do you think that is?" Abe asks evasively, putting a napkin down on the bar as easily as if he was going to put a glass on top of it.

"I think," she says as she takes her pen out to doodle, "that he has lived a very long life."

On the napkin she quickly scrawls that nanobots fix him after all the assassination attempts. She wonders if that is why Henry is there with him. Did something go wrong with the nanobots this time requires Henry's help?

"Yes, he has lived a long life," Abe says as he scoops up the now wet napkin into the trash. "But so has Henry."

"He tells me that, but I don't know how that's possible. I don't know how _you're_ possible," Jo says, pointing her finger at Abe before taking a sip of her drink.

Abraham Morgan shrugs at the beautiful woman. "Henry _is_ my father. Not the one who had to give me up, but the one who raised me. The one who is important. I know it doesn't make sense, but it's true."

He puts his hand on top of hers as if touching her will reinforce his earnestness.

"Will he come back? I don't want to go through the trouble of being assigned another partner," she says lightly, as if it's not important.

"He should be, but I don't know when," Abe says quietly before leaving to clean up the table near the view screen.

Jo nods and exits the bar after she puts some cash by her drink. She got what she could, and she'll have to wait or explore other options. Henry's absence might be nothing at all. Maybe it's good that she has to wait to see Henry so she doesn't strangle him just to see if Adam's nanobots could rebuild him, too.

* * *

It has been a total of three weeks since her last appointment at the Reproductive Center, two weeks since talking to Abe at the Antiquarian, and Jo still hasn't heard from Henry. She knows he'll show up soon because she is getting back in cycle. Adam will keep up appearances. Her leads to the Presidential Palace have been duds. Joanna Reece has been unusually tight-lipped about Henry, and Jo suspects that either she is trying to protect her own or she doesn't really know what's happening.

Jo trots to her bathroom and pulls the pregnancy test out of the package. They are free now and easy to pick up. In fact, the women in the Program, who are all able-bodied women of reproductive years, are given many samples. They are as ubiquitous in this life as condoms used to be commonplace in the life before.

She pees on the stick with her first of the morning, the best one by most tests to determine pregnancy hormones in the body. Then she waits, her mind reviewing the last three weeks she's had alone. No Henry, not a word. But her body started changing. She could feel it, and maybe it was the societal sensitivity to it. She didn't want to be pregnant, but this time she thought it might have happened.

When she sees the result that she is most definitely pregnant, Jo cries quietly. She cries because of so many emotions that she has had to keep in control. She wanted Sean's baby, not Henry's. Sean is long gone, and sometimes at night she has moments where she can't remember what his face looked like. It scares her because it really wasn't all that long ago that he died. A year and a half is just too short to start forgetting someone's face.

Jo is never one to wallow in too long in sadness. She stops herself from thinking further about the negatives. There was a phrase she heard once about life being hard enough without borrowing trouble, and she doesn't want to do any of that.

Instead she picks herself up mentally and decides to go to Abe's again. She could at least tell him. If he sees Henry it might help draw him out of the woodwork.

* * *

At Abe's it is abnormally quiet at that time of day. There is one table of people having an early lunch and a few friends chatting by the big screen TV. It seems so normal. His greeting to her when she walks in is the normal customer greeting, but it seems so loud to Jo's ears in absence of people to muffle the sound.

She approaches the bar and sits down gently. "Could we speak privately, please?"

"What is it? Does it have to do with Henry?" he asks, immediately defensive.

"Yes, in a way. Is he back yet?" Jo asks him.

"No," Abe whispers and takes her hand to lead her to the kitchen. Louder he says, "Come back to the kitchen, and I'll show you how to make the best grilled cheese sandwich in the city."

Once there, he asks, "What is it?"

Jo looks at his kind face. She wonders what kind of father Henry was and if Abe _really_ is his son. Could she and Henry be happy raising a child together? She shoves the thought out of her mind. It isn't the time to think of such things. Just the facts for now.

"I'm pregnant," she says very softly. "I just took a home test this morning."

Abe looks surprised and sits down on some stock. "Oh, dear. That could complicate things."

Jo worries her lips in agreement. "I don't know what's going on with Henry, but I need him back. Let me be the one to tell him about the baby, okay?"

"Sure, no problem," Abe says, still surprised.

She fights the question she wants to ask, but eventually lets it loose.

"Was he a good father, Abe?"

"The best," he declares.

Then he gets up and makes the sandwich for her that he'd promised. It's better to keep up appearances when they can, and this part of things is easy.


	9. Chapter 9

Jo thinks she won't see Henry again until the following week when it is time for their appointment. By then, Hanson and Lucas will do the tests that will tell the world that she is pregnant, and she wants to tell Henry herself. The resentment she feels is not the same as her anger about not wanting to get pregnant or have her body used against her. She just wants to know where he is.

She has that chance two nights later when she is back at Iona's club. Lucas has invited her, and she can't think of a reason not to be there. It's better than moping at home alone.

Jo sees Henry coming out of one of the back rooms as he talks to the woman, and Jo doesn't stop to question why he's there. She just has a sense of great relief that as frustrating as he is, her Henry is back. When she gets closer to him, though, he doesn't look so good. He looks as if he has been worked over with a meat tenderizer.

"Henry," she asks, and he turns to her with slow and pain-filled movements.

"Jo," he says, his voice rising on the single syllable as if seeing her has made him forget his pain for a moment. But maybe it hasn't and Jo is reading too much into it.

"You've been unavailable for the last three weeks," she states.

"Yes," he acknowledges as he moves stiffly. "I was getting an adjustment."

"An attitude adjustment?" she clarifies.

He gives a rueful smile. "Maybe it will take this time."

"I think I've put all the pieces together," she says as she takes him out to the dance floor. By this point they know how to move their bodies together. The fact that they have clothes on is the novelty.

"What do you think you know?" he asks as he very tiredly wraps his arms around her.

"I know the nanites rebuild Adam after every assassination attempt," she says into his hair, just the tiniest breath moving over his earlobe. "And I know that you are much older than you look, Dr. Morgan. So would it be a true assumption that the nanites work on you, too?"

"Yes," he says, and he tries to turn his face away in shame, but there's only so far he can move while in the guise of dancing.

"Don't they work on everyone? Why worry about infertility if we can engineer really long lives?" she asks.

Henry begins to speak and correct her of the error in her notion, but noise from the other end of the club gets both of their attentions. It looks like a fight, and that is quickly subdued. The only pain that is supposed to happen in the House of Payne is that done by the mistress herself.

Maybe it is time for another riot or protest to let off the stress of the lives they are living. Maybe the young people have too much vim and vinegar. No matter what the cause, the fight isn't shut down, and it tips over into an all out riot. Henry and Jo try to leave and get out of the fray before police can be called in with permission to use deadly force.

The crowd outside is no safer, and it seems that the conflict inside was just a small part of what was going on outside. Henry and Jo are standing with arms around each other outside surveying the violence, and then they try to flee. The press of bodies against them as more people try to fight or get out of the way of fighters makes it hard for them to move. Henry is weak, but Jo is determined.

When rioters start making impromptu Molotov cocktails and throwing them into the crowd Jo fears for their safety even more than she did before. She has her baby to worry about, and she just got Henry back from whatever literal torture he had endured.

Jo tries to go into an alley to get away from the violence, but she is not quick enough. She feels the dead weight of Henry slump beside her. He has been impaled with one of the projectiles from the crowd. He falls to the ground and dryly says that he never wanted her to see him like that.

She looks at him on the ground of the dirty alley, and she is still trying to fight the good fight. But Henry disappears before her eyes, and Jo is left alone on the edge of a dangerous crowd. She can be shocked about his vanishing act later when she is somewhere safe. And she will be, but she has to go now!

Jo makes it home before the police can fine her for being out after curfew. They still have a riot to contain and aren't worried about her. She limps into bed, too exhausted to think about anything that has happened to her in the last few hours.

When Jo Martinez wakes up in the morning, her sheets are soaked in blood, and there are several messy clots in her underwear. She doesn't have to take a test again to know that she's lost the baby.


	10. Chapter 10

Jo stays huddled in her apartment for the next few days after she's seen Henry and witnessed his death. But that isn't the death that has affected her most. She mourns the child she didn't think she wanted. It wasn't that her feelings about it were wrong. She didn't want to be pregnant. Not here and now. Not like this. But it was still a loss no matter how it goes.

Her justifiable depression is what keeps Jo away from her regularly scheduled appointment at the Reproductive Center. She doesn't think she should go. Henry won't be there, and she'll have to get a new partner assigned to her anyway. She rebels. Quietly. Desperately.

What she does not expect is Mike Hanson to call her and demand that she get down to the Reproductive Center as soon as possible.

"I don't care that you were at the House of Payne a few days ago. Riots or not, you still have to keep your appointments! If you come now, we might be able to slip you and Henry into a slot at three this afternoon."

"Really," she says flatly. "You want Henry and I to try again? How could I possibly try with Henry?"

"Did you two have a fight or something? He's sitting right here waiting for you. We're all waiting for you, Martinez. Disruptive behavior like this will be reported, and you won't like what happens next," Hanson huffs.

"Wait," Jo says into the phone, definitely not sure she's heard him right. She sits down just in case. "Henry is at the Center with you?"

"Where else would he be?" Hanson rails. "He keeps his appointments. I don't know what's wrong with _you_, and I don't care. Get over here."

"Right away," Jo says before she throws on some clothes to go to the center.

She doesn't worry about being pretty or clean for that matter since she'll have to take a sanitary shower on site. She just needs to see for herself that Henry Morgan is still alive.

Jo nervously showers and prepares to walk into the room where Hanson and Lucas will watch her and Henry procreate. She's never been this nervous around him before. Oh, she hasn't always liked the audience, but this takes the cake when it comes to nerves.

Lucas immediately descends upon her to put on the sensors, and Jo sneaks glances at Henry. He stares into nothing, but he's definitely there. She wants to touch him and even reaches fingers in his direction. But she retracts them quickly. They'll be skin to skin soon enough.

"It's good to see you're okay," Lucas tells her softly in her ear as he affixes the sensors. "I wasn't sure you got out of the club safely."

"I did, yes," she says. Then she adds, "You're okay, too?"

"Yeah, thanks," he nods and glances at Hanson who looks like he's ready to let loose another diatribe.

"Are you done with her vitals yet?" Mike asks.

"Yes, ready," Lucas says and backs away from them.

Then Henry and Jo begin their dance that they always do. As many times as he is able within one session and as often as she is in the prime of her fertility. It's mechanical and rehearsed, but just this once it's comforting to Jo.

As he thrusts into her, Jo gasps in his ear and whispers that she wants to speak to him in private later. He moves his head with one sharp nod to indicate he's heard her. That's all either one dares in front of Hanson or Wahl.

When they are done, Mike continues to berate them. It is with enough venom that Jo wonders if he secretly likes complaining.

"And by what reason do you have for being late to your session? It is irresponsible!"

"I think I know why," Lucas says before he gives Jo a look that resembles a kicked puppy. "I'm so sorry."

She knows he means it and knows the facts are part of her record now. But Jo doesn't want to hear it.

"Please. Don't say it out loud," she says with a shake of her head. "I can't bear to hear it."

"No, of course not," Lucas says, and puts his clipboard under his arm.

Mike Hanson looks at Lucas and asks, "What is it?"

"Her vitals showed me that she had a medical reason for being late," Lucas tells Hanson without euphemism. "It's... It's since changed."

Lucas passes over the clipboard with her test results that show her miscarriage. Hanson breathes out his regret and sympathy. "I'm sorry, Jo."

She nods to accept his moment of humanity and understanding. Though Henry is an astute man who could potentially read between the lines, he is not paying attention to them. Jo is grateful for the small grace because she doesn't want him to find out like this.

Hanson had worked with Jo when she was paired with Sean, and he knew that she took time off after his death. He subtly mentions that they have another regular session scheduled for tomorrow that could be moved. Instead of taking the out that he is trying to give her, Jo says she will be there. Then she apologizes for being late this morning.

"Of course," Hanson says. "Go take your sanitary showers."

"And don't forget your nutritional supplements," Lucas calls out to them as they walk to the showers.

"Thank you, Lucas," Henry, who had been unusually quiet, finally says to him.

He picks up Jo's dose cup and hands it to her. In his hand he's palmed a small note that he passes to her. She tosses the cup as she normally does, but not without saving his note to look at later when she has some privacy. It's a place and time for them to meet, and it's nowhere Jo has ever been before.

* * *

Jo arrives late under the cover of darkness like someone would do in all those spy thrillers that aren't really being published anymore. She doesn't understand why they are meeting on the docks, but it's no surprise how easily her mind goes to the thought of escape on one of the ships.

Henry sits on a pier at the very end of a bench in the dark. He almost looks like a vagrant, but Adam hasn't allowed those in ages. He knows she's coming because he tells her to sit right beside him on the bench.

"This part isn't in the view of the cameras, so we should be safe here for a little while," he says.

Jo sits and realizes she'll have to be constrained even in this place. After a moment she asks Henry, "Do you like the water?"

"When I was a boy I did. After I died for the first time, I didn't." The way he says it so plainly tells her that maybe he has died more than once, whatever dying means for him.

"You've died?" she asks, wondering if this was the last piece of Henry's puzzle.

"Many, many times," he says tiredly as if each death wears on his soul.

"Did you die a few nights ago?" Jo asks, controlling her voice so there will be no tremor of emotion.

"Yes, I did," he says as he looks out to the dark water instead of at her. "Whenever I return, I come back in water. I don't understand that part, but it is consistent."

"Maybe it's because there is no other place that could birth a full grown man," Jo says somberly. It's the only logical thing she can think to say, and she desperately wants the world to make sense right now.

Henry looks at her in surprise. Jo is intelligent, but her type of intelligence doesn't normally line up with the sciences. He concedes, "Maybe."

"So how does it work?" she asks, catching herself momentarily clutching her belly where the baby is no longer growing. She moves her hand away so as not to telegraph the signs.

"My body is full of nanites. So is Adam's. Whenever one of us dies, the nanites scavenge the area for viable biological material to rebuild us. They work very diligently to leave no stone unturned, or more accurately, no fetus unharvested," he says.

Henry sounds sad and guilt-ridden. He has known all along that he had his hand in the plague. He'd been dropping hints for as long as they'd been partners. This time he holds nothing back and does not wait for questions to prompt his answers.

"Many, many years ago, long before you were born, I was working on nanotechnology as a cure for diseases, especially tumors and cancers. I found the breakthrough that would take the body's bad cells, like the ones found in tumors or other damaged cells likely to get cancers, and repurpose them to make a healthy body. I thought I found the cures to diseases and the key to the longevity to the human race. Instead, I doomed it," Henry says.

He doesn't look at Jo as he tells his tale. He's already resigned to the movie of the past that is in his head.

"Abigail, Adam's wife, was my assistant at that time. The reason you don't know about her was that it was too long ago. Adam was a scientist then, too. He understood my research. He came to confront me about Abigail as I was about to test the nanites on a live test subject. We fought in my lab, and he stabbed me. It would have been fatal and final.

"Before I could die that first time, the only thing I had to save me was the nanite injection. I dosed myself, but Adam had an open wound, too. The original set of nanites infected both of us. I died, but not without taking Adam and Abigail's unborn child with me. That was the first of many children I killed at the beginning of this plague," Henry admitted.

He heard Jo's hiccup, but only glanced at her, determined to tell the rest of his gruesome story.

"My age is frozen as it was at my first death, and I've died several times since then. Whenever I die, the robots harvest unborn fetuses because that's the easiest place to find biological material that is still malleable. And it does the same for Adam. You were not wrong about the waves of miscarriages after the assassination attempts. There is direct correlation."

Henry sees Jo wipe at her eyes, and he gets the first clue that she's been crying while he's told her his truth. "Did you do it on purpose, Henry? Did you make the nanites take cells from unborn babies?"

"No! It was an accident. The worst accident," he says.

"You are a murderer, Henry Morgan," Jo says. "You killed us all. You killed my happiness in so many ways. You killed my choice. You killed Sean. You killed. My baby," she says, standing up from the bench like a rocket about to go off.

"What?" Henry asks her, standing up with equal urgency.

Jo's face is a twisted mask of hate. "I was pregnant. When I saw you at House of Payne, I was pregnant!"

Henry has come into her personal space, and Jo pounds her fist on his chest. She hits him again to make him feel pain here and now. "Everything I hate about this world is because of you, Henry Morgan!"

Jo hits him again, making him retreat backwards toward the building. "You died, and you took our baby with you! I never wanted your baby, but you gave me one. Then you took it away!"

Jo speaks faster and faster as if she cannot block the flood of words. "You will never know the sheer terror of watching someone you thought you cared about die in front of you and then waking up in a pool of your own blood. You. Will. Never. Understand."

She punches and slaps Henry, raging to let her anguish out, and he takes it because it is he feels he deserves. He wishes she could harm him so he could do penance for his sins. Jo falls apart and into his arms where she wails from deep within her soul. She begins to scream her sobs, but Henry stops her sound with his mouth over hers.

It is not a kiss. They have never shared anything as tender as a kiss. It is the mouth to mouth transfer of raw grief as if he is an incubus stealing her life force away from her. In a way, he is.

But he covers her mouth with his as a way to muffle her screams and contain her as well as he can. They might be in a private place, but no place is truly safe for long. Henry knows he has to get them both out of there soon.

After minutes uncounted, Jo slumps limply in his arms, too tired and broken to fight any more. It is too close to the curfew, and Henry worries about Jo being alone. Henry calls for a cab and reports with the driver that the woman is going to stay with him instead of her own place after curfew.

"Who is she staying with?" the driver asks as he makes the necessary notes in his passenger logs.

"Abraham Morgan," Henry quickly supplies. If he uses his own name, he knows this will spell disaster.


	11. Chapter 11

Once they arrive at the Antiquarian, Henry pulls Jo into his arms and carries her into Abe's personal room in the living quarters. He fears that waking in his room will not do well for Jo who already has reason to despise him. Abraham opens the door without question and follows closely on his heels.

"Pop?" Abe asks with worry, letting the familial out when they are alone together. "What happened to Jo?"

"She had a miscarriage," Henry says clinically, not acknowledging that it was his baby they lost. "And now she knows exactly why it happened."

Abe gasps, his hand covering his mouth in concern. "She was going to tell you."

Henry turns, his eyes widening in disbelief. "You knew she was pregnant?"

"Yes. She told me a week ago," Abe says. He looks like he's about to say more but can't decide what to say. "She came to me in hopes I could find you so she could tell you."

Henry's head droops to his chest. "She was standing right beside me when I died. There was no way she was going to keep the baby."

Abe drops down beside her and puts his hand on the sleeping Jo's shoulder. "I'll stay here and take care of her."

"Good," Henry says, already on the retreat.

"Dad, wait," Abe calls out.

Henry doesn't turn around, but he stops, his posture stiff-backed and rigid.

"You lost a baby, too," Abe says gently. "Are you going to be okay?"

"No," he admits. "I need to stop this. I need to stop all of this. I'm going to my lab downstairs. Maybe there's something in the information Joanna sent me that can help. Maybe I'm missing it. I've been clasping at straws so long, and now Jo…"

Henry doesn't finish his thought because he doesn't need to. He tamps the emotion that threatens to spill out of him. He tells himself that he needs to focus as he flees to his lab, leaving Jo with Abe.

* * *

When Jo wakes again, she's not sure where she is. She knows she's not at home. The decor is decidedly male, but she didn't go home with anyone last night. She would have remembered reporting herself to the curfew keepers. She doesn't understand, but then it hits her. Henry.

She turns over to see Abe, waiting patiently at her bedside with a cup of tea ready for her. "Good morning, Jo. It's green tea. It should make you feel better."

She takes it slowly, dubiously, but he smiles his patient smile at her.

"Where am I?"

"This is my room," he says. "Henry thought it better if you were here instead of in his bed."

Jo pauses to glare because Henry is not wrong about that. She then sips her tea as the tries to make sense of all she learned. She is quiet and angry, but Abe lets her be. He doesn't jump in to her emotions or make excuses for his adoptive father. He waits and takes care of her, and Jo appreciates that.

"I lost the baby," she tells him, making the act of setting down her teacup a delicate ballet that distracts her from the ugliness of her words.

"I'm sorry, Jo," he says, and it's so sincere, she actually looks in his eyes. "Do you know the rest of Henry's secrets now?"

"I'm afraid that if there are any other secrets that I don't know, I wouldn't be able to bear it," she says with a laugh to obscure that she means what she says.

Henry noisily approaches the room to give Jo and Abe warning. As he steps into the door frame, Jo can tell that he's been up all night. He has the bloodshot eyes and disheveled appearance of one who has been hard at work, most likely in his personal makeshift science lab below.

"We have another appointment today at the Reproductive Center," he says, not looking at her directly.

"I don't think I can ever touch you again, Henry," Jo says in a soft and resigned way that is somehow worse when she is at her fiercest and loudest.

Henry doesn't try to offer apologies. He just explains that they have to keep up appearances so Adam doesn't get suspicious.

"Or what? Adam will do what if he knows? He'll beat you like a steak? He'll kill you only for you to die and live to be killed again? What effect does this have on you, Henry?" Jo demands to know.

"He will hurt those I love and care about! They are precious and few, and right now you are one of them, no matter what you feel about me," Henry answers, passion filling his voice as it does so rarely. "I never wanted to hurt you, Jo."

"Too late for that," she says.

"I think you need help," Abe interrupts them. "You want to finish this, don't you?"

"More than anything," Henry says, and there's an apology in his eyes to Jo.

"Dad, I've watched you my whole life try to figure out the riddle of nanite infection and why it doesn't work the way you wanted it to. You need help. More than Joanna Reece, even as gifted as she is."

Jo latches on to the problem as a way to stop thinking about herself and her pains. She considers her options as if they were a savory flavor. When she comes to a conclusion, she says, "Lucas Wahl."

"The tech from the Reproductive Center?" Henry asks, immediately rejecting her suggestion.

"Yes, Lucas. He was the one who explained to me how nanites worked. He's an intelligent man, but you would never know that because you have Hanson attending to you and your jibblies."

"Jibblies?" Abe asks.

Jo shakes her head. "Nothing. Something one of my friends said to me."

"Ah," Abe punctuates. "Well, he could help. Especially if you clue him in and have him work with you and Reece. Assuming he's trustworthy."

"I think he is," Jo says at the same time that Henry says, "I don't know him."

Abe gets up from the chair and walks out of the room in search of something. The two who remain behind don't use their time to talk. Instead, they perfect the art of making judgmental faces at each other.

It doesn't take long for Abe to return to the room, and he's writing on a piece of paper that he hands to Jo. "Give this to Lucas. It's the best thing I know to lure a poor tech out to play."

Jo looks down and sees that it's a food and drink coupon for the bar. It includes a hand written recommendation to try one of the specialty items that Abe is particularly known for.

"Nice," Jo says. "A hungry man has to eat, and free is good."

"I think so, too," Abe says with a nod. "Now both of you get to the Center. You've got an appointment and a new person to recruit to your secret mission."

He speaks with gravitas as if he is the father, and oddly enough, Henry actually listens to him. He and Jo take the public transportation to the Reproductive Center, and any talk they do make is stilted and extremely shallow.

* * *

"How are you feeling today?" Lucas asks kindly as he puts the sensors on Jo's skin.

"I've had better days, but thank you for asking," she says as she looks sincerely into his eyes and takes his hand. "I think you're a good man, Lucas. I hope I'm right about that."

He coughs lightly, and pulls his hand away, stuffing it nervously into his pocket. He runs his other hand through his hair like he's not used to taking a compliment.

"Well, thank you," he says, the words stumbling out of his mouth.

Hanson is talking to Henry and then gives them both instructions. He also lectures the pair that they need to change their supplements in case that could have helped prevent the miscarriage. The pair watch stone-faced, but Hanson has to go through with the drill.

"It's just how we do things," he says in his own defense.

"Thanks, Mike," Henry comments.

Then it is time for Henry and Jo to have their well-observed and statistically recorded sexual intercourse. The goings are slow at first as Jo flinches a time or two as Henry gets in position. Then Jo just turns her mind off for a while, despair her familiar friend.

She now knows they can get pregnant. It was actually easy, even at her age where it is biologically harder with every passing day. Keeping the baby, though, that was hard. A tear escapes her eyes, and Jo later looks up to see Henry's eyes damp with his own unshed tears.

They finish their session and wordlessly go to the sanitary showers afterward as they do every single time. This time, however, a hastily scrawled note waits for Jo in her locker.

_"I'll be there. -L"_

She holds the note to her chest and hopes that maybe this time her faith in humanity will be rewarded.


	12. Chapter 12

There was an argument to get Joanna Reece to make an appearance because she fears for her job and her personal safety. Luckily, Abe has everything planned as a push to get more people to use his bar. That covers new people coming and going where they had not before.

Jo sits casually in front of the TV trash talking the latest sports event, and Lucas sits near her but not with her. He takes a drink off a long-neck bottle of beer and eats one of Abe's famous sandwiches. At one of the loud moments in the game, Jo gets up as if she's going to the bathroom, and she doesn't come back.

A few minutes later, Lucas has finished his beer, and he takes a stroll only to disappear from the bar down to Henry's secret lab. The press of bodies keeping Abe in business that night takes their seats as if Jo and Lucas were never there. Abe runs around the Antiquarian keeping everyone happy and noisy while the secret meeting goes on down below.

When Lucas descends into Henry's lab, he sees that Jo and Reece are already there. Joanna Reece is giving Henry a look that can most reasonably be interpreted as "Are you kidding me?"

Henry acknowledges him. "Thank you for coming, Lucas. This is Joanna Reece. She is a virologist working for the government, one of the best there is, actually."

Lucas offers his hand to shake, and she pumps his hand one time firmly.

"Henry, whatever you've got planned had better be good," Joanna says.

He pauses her with a wave of his hand and turns his attention to Lucas. "Jo says I can trust you. I need to know for sure. If I can't, you can go back upstairs and enjoy the rest of the free beer and chicken wings that Abe is treating you to."

"Trustworthy how?" Lucas asks, suspiciously.

"Henry might know how to cure the plague," Jo says. "Well, he knows what caused the plague, but he needs help finding a cure."

Lucas pivots, looking at both Jo and Henry. "And how long have you known this?"

Henry smiles his smug secret smile. "That is privileged information only if you're staying. I need help. We all do, and Adam's government isn't going to find the cure."

"Why not?" Lucas asks.

"Because it's in his best interest that the cure is not found," Henry says as if dangling a carrot. "Are you interested?"

"Yes," Lucas answers and sits down.

Henry paces a little to organize his thoughts so he can get Lucas quickly up to speed with Jo and Joanna who know his secret now.

"I am old, Lucas. I was the original Dr. Morgan who was doing nanotechnology research before the outbreak of the plague. I am him, not his descendant. The reason I don't look old is that the nanites work. But there is one catch."

Because he was answering Jo's questions recently, Henry's mind is primed for those questions, but Lucas races ahead to Henry's conclusion. "The nanites caused the plague?"

"In a manner of speaking. Only two doses were ever made, and those doses were administrated to me and to Adam. They repair a body wonderfully when it's damaged or dies," Henry says, intrigued by the reveal of Lucas's intellect.

"Oh," the younger man says. Then he stares at Henry with a fortitude that hadn't even been hinted at during his work at the Center. "Tell me exactly what the nanites do."

"They harvest biological material to repair that which is dead or broken. Usually they scavenge fetuses _in utero_ because those cells are easier to take."

Lucas nods his understanding, bobbing his head as he thinks about it. Then he stills and turns back to look at Jo, already suspicious if her miscarriage was a casualty of the nanites. She nods quickly to confirm his suspicion but turns her face away because she doesn't want to talk about it.

"So why do they only work for you and Adam?" Lucas asks. "If you're the expert, why aren't they working properly?"

"I don't know," Henry says in frustration. "Something essential about the programming of the nanites was changed. I've looked at my original research, what notes I still have. For simple machines, I can't change their behavior."

"That's why he talked to me," Reece says to Lucas. "I have researched some viral strains that might have changed the programming of the nanites."

"Is that even possible?" Lucas wonders aloud. Then he changes his thoughts. "How can I help with this?"

"I don't know if you can," Henry says coldly as he would to his former assistants. "Jo has a high opinion of you, and I have few resources to find this cure."

"Oh," Lucas says as if he understands. "I'm the only choice you have left."

"Sadly, yes," Henry answers honestly.

"So what do you want me to do?" Lucas asks and takes the files from Henry's desk. Jo sits quietly beside him and looks at the information he's holding.

"I'd like to turn the nanites off. Yes, their coding is wrong, but if they can just be turned off, then they'll never harvest another fetus again," Henry says as if it's simple.

Lucas turns the pages in the folder and asks casually, "Have you ever tried an electromagnetic pulse?"

"As a way to die? Yes. I'm still here," Henry says and sits down behind his desk.

"Can you help us, Lucas?" Jo asks him gently, her hand on his arm for added emphasis.

He sighs as he skims the notes. "I can try."

"If this works, our lives will change," Reece tells the group. "Some of the very institutions we've erected to combat the plague and its effects will no longer be necessary. Such as the Department of Reproduction."

"I wouldn't mind being out of work for that reason," Lucas says, his eyes still on the paperwork. "I assume I am working with you, Joanna."

"Yes," the older woman tells him before they size each other up.

"Can I take this with me?" Lucas asks of Henry's research.

"I'd rather you didn't," he says to protect his research, but then he relents. "If you must, but keep it hidden."

"Thank you," Lucas says as he stands. "I must be going. Joanna, it was lovely to meet you. I'll have to look you up soon for lunch, and we can talk one government employee to another."

"Good plan, Mr. Wahl," she says, shaking his hand.

He smiles at her and leaves. Henry visually follows his wake, surprised that another person has joined his crusade.


	13. Chapter 13

During the next six months Lucas and Joanna Reece see each other so regularly that the rumor mill declares they are dating. Reece has a reputation for dating younger men, and neither one of them goes out of the way to deny or comment on this new relationship. Hanson is even so bold to make a comment about it at the end of one of Jo and Henry's sessions at the Center.

While Jo could be cynical and think that maybe this is a convenient ruse to allow them time together, she is also a very good investigator. Signs have indicated that _something_ is happening between them. She doesn't actually know what that is, but she doesn't begrudge them happiness if they can find it.

Working with Henry has taken its toll on Jo. Once the mask of a polite man in a hard society is taken off, Jo sees underneath that he's driven and focused to the point of obsession. He does care deeply, though, and she is included in that circle of those he does care about. They become friends of a sort, though she never feels she can love him as freely as she loved Sean.

The other relationships in the small group change, too. Jo spends much more time with Abe. He has a different charm than his adoptive father, but it is authentic and not built around protecting a personal secret at all costs. He has even started making a Jo sandwich just for her that has become their thing. It is unexpectedly touching in a world where kindness is so rare.

Jo and Henry's sessions at the Reproductive Center have continued. Nothing much is different there. They've been having procreative sex with each other for nearly two years. They're all a little older and more tired. Hanson doesn't even make his movement jokes any more because he knows the pair _can_ create life together. It's almost like he's taken it as a personal affront that he can't get them to do it again.

During one of the sessions in which Lucas is affixing the body monitors to Jo, he whispers, "House of Payne tonight. Regular time. Bring Henry. Joanna and I have something."

"Already?" Jo asks, smiling at him with one of those rare smiles that goes to her eyes.

"Something," Lucas whispers again before falling back to his sanitized job persona.

Jo nods and turns to the task at hand. Sex with Henry. It's still just sex, not making love. Not fucking. But it's different, too, because they know each other. Sometimes he touches her tenderly when Hanson isn't looking, and it almost seems sincere.

She passes the message to him when he is nearly on the edge of orgasm, when their sex sounds cover whispers that they might have. He gives a sign that he understands, and Jo hopes it is true.

* * *

At the House of Payne, Iona is holding court as she frequently does. Her beauty is the kind that almost hurts to look at, but they need something beautiful in this world. It's amazing that Adam hasn't tried to get his hands on her somehow. Jo then thinks it's possible he has and everything in this club is monitored and sent back to his people. The thought makes her very paranoid and jumpy when Reece finds her.

"Miss Martinez," she says in that low velvet voice. Reece invokes the girl code by saying, "Let's go to the bathroom."

Jo takes her non-alcoholic drink with her and follows Reece until she side-steps into one of the private club rooms. Lucas is there with a device on the table. Henry isn't there yet. As the women enter the room, he leaves to be ready for Henry. Moments later, the men enter the room, and Lucas locks the door.

Reece presses the device to start, and Henry asks her what it is.

"Bug jammer," she says. "This isn't the solution. Lucas has that."

"Joanna helped," he says blushingly, and they both make complimentary noises toward each other.

Henry's face shows that he is unimpressed. Lucas then focuses to explain his research process and what he thinks might work. It was all rather interesting, but Henry wanted the bottom line and urged the younger man to hurry to the end of his story.

"We need to give you cancer," he says succinctly.

"Cancer?" Henry deadpans.

"Yes," Reece adds. "If it's a large enough quantity, it will shock the nanobots into following their original programming."

Henry scrubs his face as he thinks of the implications. His eyes are wide with surprise. Then he becomes a little rueful since he hadn't thought of that himself.

"Are you sure this will work?"

Reece looks at her former lover, "It's the best solution Lucas and I have been able to find in lab tests of your blood samples."

"How do we get Adam's attention?" Jo asks. "It's not like we can kidnap him. His security is too good."

"Make him come to you," Lucas suggests. "If Adam is as obsessed with you as you think, then he'd probably like to meet you for a little time _mano a mano_."

Henry shrugs. "Lucas, you're right. That does seem Adam's style."

"But you still have to get him and give him enough of the cancer cells that it will take over," Jo says. "That's not going to be easy."

"If it works, I'm taking the cure," Henry declares to no one's surprise. "As long as those rogue nanites exist anywhere, they are a danger to society everywhere."

"That's fine and heroic, but we have to take down Adam first," Jo says.

"And you have to have enough of the cancer cells to infect him. You'll need more than just one simple syringe," Reece says.

Henry mulls it over, and then the most elegant solution comes to him. He smiles a predator's smile at Lucas who flinches as he sees it.

"What?" he asks, looking to Reece and Jo for help.

"If we have a cure for the reproductive problems of our population, then Adam obviously needs to come to the Reproductive Center. Even Adam can't go everywhere with his full complement of guards, especially not if a couple is in the middle of a session," Henry says as a plan starts to form.

"How do you do you expect us to get him there?" Jo asks.

Henry smiles wide as he does when he thinks he's brilliant. "We invite him, of course."


	14. Chapter 14

Lucas takes great pleasure in baiting the trap for Adam with Henry. He tells him that it reminds him of the heist movies that he saw buried in the entertainment archives when he was younger. Henry runs with that.

Henry's wants to be as much of a thorn in Adam's side as he can be to get his attention. It helps, Henry explains to his friends, that Adam keeps tabs on him anyway.

Both Jo and Reece are skeptical about the wisdom of his actions, particularly since there are not very many direct avenues to Adam. Attempting to advertise the existence of a "cure" in the media might be shut down before it begins since that is all under Adam's control anyway.

So the group decides to make a multi-layered attack. Lucas will use some of his friends who are computer hackers to get the word out stealthily. Reece can drop word with the scientists contracted to the government that she heard about a cure with one of the independent researchers who wants to share information with Adam. Jo will pick some of her more strategic clients with whom to share that she has investigated a very real cure.

As they prepare to leave the House of Payne, Lucas introduces himself to Iona who smiles at him languidly as if he is the only one she sees at that moment. It is one of her many gifts. One of Iona's other gifts is that her club is a meeting place for many different people, even under Adam's regime. With her on their side, it could provide the tipping point for their cause.

"Do you mind telling a few of your customers about something?" he asks, trying for his best suave behavior.

Henry rolls his eyes at the younger man's awkward attempt, but Lucas will not be swayed. "You know I work at the Reproductive Center, don't you?"

"I do," she says saucily. "I've seen you a few times when I've gone for my appointments, but you're not on my team."

"I think that is a good thing. I might find it hard to be professional," he flirts.

As the woman laughs, both Jo and Henry share surprise at his surprising grasp of the game. Reece looks impatient.

"Listen, this man," Lucas indicates with his hand on Henry's shoulder, "has found a cure for the infertility. At least he thinks so. But he has to get Adam to come and meet with him."

"Oh, have you?" Iona asks Henry, giving him her full regard, which surprisingly makes the older man blush.

"Yes, I have. But Adam doesn't want to listen to me because I don't work in the normal channels. Since I am not one of his scientists, my work is considered less valid," he tells her in an approximation of modesty.

"I can tell some of the right people," she agrees. "Protecting my personal choice is very much one of my interests."

"Thank you!" Jo says, brandishing her hand toward Iona. She had not expected the woman would be in their corner much less have views that aligned with Jo's own, but people had a way of surprising you.

Reece leans over to Jo and tells her, "Abraham should do the same in his bar. Be subtle, but spread the word."

"Yes, of course," Jo agrees.

Henry and Iona speak a little more, but then the group departs and disperses to their separate destinations.

* * *

One of Iona's contacts ends up being sympathetic to her charms if not her cause, and in a few weeks he gets Henry on the news under the guise that Dr. Morgan will be talking about climate change. There is something of a bait and switch involved since Henry wants to tell the world he has a solution to the infertility.

The evening of the newscast, Iona's male friend is replaced by a female newscaster who sizes Henry up and finds him very appealing. She makes no secret of this, and he hopes he can use even that to his advantage.

The caked makeup is uncomfortable on Henry's skin, but he concentrates on being suave and using his powers of persuasion. They had worked very well in the past, and a long life has given him more than enough chances to build and refine the skill.

"Thank you for having me on the show," he tells the news reader with a devilish smile intended on making the hearts of viewers swoon.

"Mr. Morgan, you came highly recommended as an expert on climate change. What is the message that you would like to tell our viewers on the effect of climate change in their lives?" she asks Henry.

"To be honest, Patty," he says with a boyish head bow to the woman, "I came on the show this evening not to talk about the climate of our weather, but the climate of our bodies. I believe unequivocally that I have a cure for the widespread infertility that is damaging our society."

Newscaster Patty is thrown by this monkey wrench of a topic change. She looks towards her teleprompter for any help she can get, but finds none. Subsuming her surprise with poise, she tries to recover in style. "Are you are sure you have a way to cure the plague?"

"I believe so, yes. It won't be an instant solution. I want everyone to understand that. If Adam approves it, though, we could see results in as soon as three months when babies live past the first trimester of pregnancy."

"That's completely fascinating, but this isn't the first time someone has made that claim," she says with practiced skepticism. "How do you plan on enacting your cure if it indeed does work? Please tell the audience at home what that cure is, Mr. Morgan

Henry pauses in a rehearsed way. "To make this happen, I need the help of our benevolent leader, who only wants the best for his people. I am using this news platform as a way to reach out to Adam. If he can meet me at the Reproductive Center, I will show him the cure I have devised. It is based around a simple change to the dietary supplements the couples are taking. My partner and I are more than willing to demonstrate that for him."

"What if Adam doesn't agree? You could be branded a lunatic trying to create hope where it is unfounded," Patty says.

In response, Henry says with an affectation of embarrassment, "You are a good reporter, aren't you? Do you think I'd be able to lie to you? I might actually be a loon, but I propose would make so many lives better, including yours, Patty."

She subtly nods to allow him to continue, and Henry plies her with his smarmiest and sincerest smile. "I challenge Adam to meet me and have lunch with me. Then he can make his own decision based on the facts."

Turning to the camera to plead his case, Henry adds "I'm reaching out to you, Adam. I think you will be very interested in what I have to say. It will be a big impact on both of us."

"Well, there you have it," the newscaster wraps up with as much grace as she can muster after being ambushed with an unapproved segment. "Henry Morgan who just might have a cure for the infertility. This company has not independently verified the truth of his claims. It is now in the court of public opinion and that of our leader Adam."

After the segment ends, Henry removes his microphone and goes to the dressing room to remove his makeup. The interview and the other activities should hopefully be enough to get a response from Adam very soon.


	15. Chapter 15

The efforts from Henry's cohorts have paid off so that Adam has scheduled to make an official inspection of the Reproduction Center at the same time as Henry and Jo's regularly scheduled appointment. Though security for Adam is high, everything to bring down the nanites is in place. Days before Adam's appearance, Lucas switches out the normal supplements for sugar placebo pills that look and taste the same. Hanson is an unwitting accomplice on the day of the Presidential visit as he prepares the cups and sets out bottles of water that are sealed from tampering.

Henry and Jo emerge from their sanitary showers and put robes on before walking into the main work room. Adam and two of his security squad wait for them with Adam looking none too impressed.

"Adam! Thank you for coming," Henry says grandly.

"I couldn't avoid it," he replies mordantly. "You were creating too much word of mouth about the possibility that a cure might be found. We both know that's not true, and I couldn't imagine why you would want to meet with me after that month I had you at the Presidential Palace not that long ago."

"I just can't get enough of your witty repartee. No one else makes a killing joke like you do," Henry deadpans. "I did find a cure, by the way. It's in these pills. They have a new formula. Go on. Take them."

Adam stares at Henry in that untouchable austere way he has. "I don't trust you. You know that."

"I took care of these myself, sir," Hanson tells Adam. "They were sealed before I portioned them out this morning."

"I'm not afraid of them," Jo says as she takes her allotted portion easily without any water to chase it down. She makes a face at her impulsiveness and comments on a choke that she should have had the water.

"What are you afraid of?" Henry asks him, pointing a sealed bottle of water in Adam's direction.

Adam is not one to be deceived by whatever game Henry is playing with him. He sends the offending items away with a wave of his hand. "You will have to work harder than that, Dr. Morgan."

Henry shrugs at him and takes his supplements and water. Then he tells Adam, "Since you're here, my partner and I should do our government mandated time at least once. I wouldn't want to disappoint my leader."

"You forget how I caught you and Abigail having sex. I've seen more of you naked, Henry Morgan, than I care to see again," he says with a low rumble meant only for Henry's ears.

"Well, then make this one more time then," Henry says sweetly as he disrobes.

Jo also disrobes and is strangely quiet with her nervousness. It is one thing to have sex in front of Hanson and Lucas. After approximately two years together, they are like furniture unless Hanson is coaching them for specific moves. Lucas helps her, though, by standing in front of her as he applies the monitors and generally blocks her nudity from Adam and his two guards.

Henry and Jo begin their well-practiced movements, and Adam groans as if he is a disappointed teacher about to give them a failing grade. He makes a disparaging remark about not being a voyeur, yet he doesn't leave the room, either. When everything and everyone is complete, Hanson and Lucas retake the vital signs of their charges.

"Hard work," Henry says breathlessly to Adam before taking a large swig from the bottle of water. "Do you want some, Jo?"

"I could really go for a green tea right now if it's all the same to you. I need something to calm my nerves," she says in a way that is so full of the truth that it doesn't move Adam's bullshit radar.

Henry puts on his robe and says, "If you'd like to speak to me in private, we can go to the roof. I've asked the Antiquarian to cater a sandwich lunch for us. Your guards can inspect it, of course, to make sure it hasn't been poisoned."

"I love the Antiquarian," one of the silent-until-then guards says to the other. "Their chicken wings are the best."

"I know, right?" Lucas says to him with a smile that is surprisingly sincere.

"So, shall we avail ourselves to lunch and a lovely view of the city while I share with you my plan to cure all that ails us?" Henry asks Adam.

The leader holds up his hand and tells his guards to check the food, including taste samples in case there _is_ poison. After it passes inspection, Adam tells them to bring it up to the roof where he and Henry will have their meeting in private.

"This is wonderfully civilized, Adam," Henry praises. "Thank you for meeting with me."

"It's not too late for me to throw you off the roof," he threatens Henry quietly as they leave the two guards, Hanson, Lucas and Jo behind.

* * *

Henry seems comfortable on the rooftop, the same one where many months ago he and Jo made their first steps to truly work together to overthrow the regime. It is oddly fitting that the end will happen here as well.

Henry points to the table with the food and the chilled bottles of water beside it. He acts as a gracious host, and Adam is justifiably suspicious.

"What is your plan, Henry?" Adam asks, cutting through all pleasantries.

"My plan is to eat, drink, and be merry. You will, too, and then I'll share with you my cure for the infertility," he says as he takes a bite of the sandwich that is loaded with some of the best fixings in the city.

"I don't care what your guard said about the chicken wings. The sandwiches at the Antiquarian are really better than they have a right to be," Henry comments with moans of pleasure as he takes each bite. "Maybe you're not hungry, but I know _I_ just earned my appetite. I always did get hungry after sex. Abigail knew about that inclination of mine."

"Trying to goad me, Henry? That is beneath you," Adam replies.

"Abigail was beneath me," he says crudely. "Now eat your sandwich, Adam. We have a long talk ahead of us."

Adam picks up the sandwich and considers switching plates in case his guards failed to detect and hidden poisons. It's not that he thinks it would kill him, but it would be inconvenient to die in the middle of negotiations.

Dr. Morgan sees his hesitation and says, "Anything I'm having, you can have. If it will make you feel better, take it. My water, my fruit, the rest of my sandwich. All yours, Adam."

Suspicious but patient, Adam eats the food, chasing it down with copious amounts of water from the factory sealed bottles. When he is at last ready, he declares, "I'm done. Now tell me your plan."

"It's very simple, and it will work," Henry says. "You and I both know that the real reason the people can't reproduce is that the nanites in our bodies scavenge cells from fetuses when we die. The citizens don't know the truth about the real cause of the so-called plague, but we do."

"Do you plan on telling them?" Adam asks before wiping his sweat beaded forehead and taking a sip of water. It was an interesting interrogation technique of Henry's to sit in the blazing sun instead of under the cover of shade.

"No. I don't think it would do them any good, do you? They never need to know about either of us. But we need to change the behavior of the nanites so that maybe they won't take material from babies any more," Henry tells him.

"I know you think I changed the code of the nanites, and I did help things along. I admit that, but most of what is wrong with them is of your design. It's a shame that you hadn't figured that out until now. Have you gotten smarter, Henry?" Adam teases.

"I haven't. You're right. Hubris will kill me," he says reflectively as he swallows. "Of course, you're going with me."

"Really?" Adam deadpans. "You try to kill me. I come back. I try to kill you. You come back. It's all a cycle, and we will be battling it out forever."

"No, we won't. We have both lived a very long time, and that will change. In the next three months or so, pregnancies will last beyond the first trimester. Instead of a wave of miscarriages, we will have unprecedented waves of success. It will be a baby boom, if you will.

"That change in society will give you a chance to systematically dismantle the reproductive laws and government oversight that have been in place, and you'll come out in the court of public opinion looking like a hero," Henry says. "You will be the one remembered as the savior in our modern time."

"Henry, you always did like the sound of your own voice. Is that what Abigail found so fascinating about you? I always thought you were a boor, and I still do," Adam says. Then he adds, "I enjoy watching you suffer. After you took my wife, it has been one of the few enjoyments I do have in this life."

"Yes, mutual pain and suffering. We really should put a stop to that," Henry says.

"And why would I do that?" Adam asks, his eyes wide in challenge.

"It's because you'll be too busy making sure you leave some legacy behind," Henry says.

"You are the worst kind of obtuse—a man convinced of his own cleverness," Adam says with a sigh. "Get to your point, Henry. You obviously have a grand plan, so tell me now or this conversation ends with you back in the bowels of the Presidential Palace."

Henry fingers the plastic water bottle in his hand and points towards Adam's bottle. "Drink up! You're going to love this. I promise. You finish that bottle and I swear I'll tell you."

"What are you? A child?" Adam asks with disdain before his natural thirst prompts him to drink.

Adam is actually thirstier than he's been in a long time. Before Henry can share his grand plan, he twists open a new bottle and downs half the contents in one big gulp. Henry smiles at him in true pleasure as he does, a reaction that Adam does not understand.

"So what is it?" Adam asks after he finishes his water.

"I've just given you cancer," Henry says smugly as he takes a drink. "Me, too, actually. It won't kill us this time, but next time it will be permanent."

"I don't believe you. The nanites are supposed to fight cancer," Adam growls.

"Yes, that was the original intention. A very smart man from my group of friends has a theory that if we flood the host body with enough cancers, the nanites will reset to their original programming as cancer fighting agents. Instead of stealing biological material from fetuses, they will harvest from the cancer cells right inside us. So drink up, Adam! You're saving the future of the human race!"

"This is absolutely absurd!" Adam says as he stands up from the table. He has heard enough and has no patience for Henry's grandstanding.

"You know, I used to fear cancer," Henry says philosophically as he drinks freely from the cancer-filled bottle in his hand. "It was the driving force behind my work. I was going to eradicate it. It turns out, though, that cancer will eradicate me. And you."

Henry laughs with morbid amusement while Adam takes count of the empty bottles of water. Both he and Henry have been drinking rather heavily for the entire time they've been on the roof. Adam grabs for another one to inspect it, and it is factory sealed just as it should be.

"My son has connections in bottling," Henry explains. "It was nothing to get a special batch made just for the President's visit. One of my other friends has connections to get only the best and immediately acting cancers. I should have had you drink to your health!"

"You've just killed me," Adam says dramatically.

"No, I haven't," Henry says glibly. "We were never supposed to live this long anyway. I've only made it so that you have to live out the rest of your natural human lifetime without scientific enhancements."

"How can you be sure this will actually work?" Adam asks.

"Well, we did a limited test in a lab. I can't be completely sure, of course. I guess one of us will have to die first. I volunteer that person be you, and due to a high recurrence of assassination attempts, we may well find out very soon," Henry says. "It might be of interest to you to rework public policy so you come out with a better approval rating. Otherwise, the rest of your natural life might be very short. It might already be too late."

"I've had enough of this nonsense!" Adam says, getting up from the table and walking to the exit.

"Goodbye, Adam! See a doctor about your cancer," Henry shouts after him, ending with a self-satisfied chuckle.

Once Adam is gone, Henry allows himself to be amazed at how well the meeting went down. As revolutions go to overthrow corrupt regimes go, this one was quiet and bloodless.


	16. Chapter 16

The first few days and weeks after the meeting with Adam are eerily quiet for the team. They don't know whether their plan worked or failed miserably. They eventually think that maybe they've done something right when the government's stance on the mandated breeding program begins to change.

In the months that follow, Adam tells his citizens he has found something that will bring everyone to typical levels of fertility. He assures them that some people will still have problems conceiving, but the waves of miscarriages should stop as long as the citizens remember to take their supplements—a sugar pill of no importance.

Other aspects of the society change, too, little by little. Government employees and resources from the Department of Reproduction are being repurposed to handle the population boom that is sure to follow. That includes the people Jo and Henry know at the Reproductive Center.

After the meeting with Adam, Jo and Henry participate in a few more months of sessions at the Center before they cease their service in the breeding program. At their last sessions, Hanson shares with them that he is taking a job with higher pay and more prestige to be an administrator in the largest hospital in the area.

"That seems like a good fit for you. Congratulations," Jo tells him. Then she asks, "What about you, Lucas?"

"I've gotten a position with Joanna Reece," Lucas begins.

Hanson interrupts with typical male teasing. "From the sound of things, you've had several positions with her already."

Neither confirming nor denying Hanson's innuendo, Lucas says, "This will be for paid employment. She thinks I am an excellent researcher."

"That's wonderful!" Jo says, hugging the man without censure in front of Henry or Hanson.

Henry hugs Lucas, too, for without his insight, they couldn't have taken down Adam or the entire reproductive bureaucracy.

Then he and Jo leave the Center for the last time, and it's a beautiful day.

"Do you want to have a sandwich in the park?" Henry asks her unsurely. They can start over now, and they don't need to be with each other if they don't want to be.

Jo holds her head high, enjoying the sun and the light breeze. "Yes, that would be lovely. Thank you."

So they go to the park near where Sean died over two years ago, the place where Jo first found Henry on the bench, and they eat lunch. They talk. They think that maybe this time, just maybe, they could become friends. Perhaps it is not too much to hope for in this world.

* * *

A few weeks later, Jo shows up at the Antiquarian for lunch. Abe sees her and smiles his greeting.

"Are you here for Henry?" he asks.

"Believe it or not, I'm not here for him," she says with an enigmatic smile as she climbs up to the bar. "I'm here to talk to you."

"Me? What for? You know I'll never give you the recipe for my famous sandwiches," he teases.

"No, not that. It's… I have news," she says. "Big news."

"What?" he asks her, leaning toward her with a smile.

"I'm pregnant again. It's Henry's, of course, and he doesn't know it yet. But this time it could work. And I'm okay with that. I'm surprised at how okay with that I am," she acknowledges. "Maybe because this time it really does feel like a choice instead of a compulsion."

"That's wonderful!" he says, coming out from behind the bar to hug her. "Let me get you some fried pickles on the house. You'll love 'em."

Abe goes to his kitchen to start her order and comes back quickly. "So when are you going to tell Henry?"

"Soon. Yeah, soon." She's smiling and looks really happy without reserve. Abe thinks she looks beautiful like that, and he has no trouble telling her.

Like many moments of quiet beauty, the stillness is broken later by a stranger running into the Antiquarian and demanding everyone turn on the news. He shouts that Adam is presumed dead. It is a concept too frightening for some to imagine and too unbelievable to others. Adam had been practically bulletproof after surviving several rumored assassinations.

One of the sports fans at the big screen TV turns on the channel to a live news report with a car twisted around a tree and burning. The reporter at the scene is Patty who played into Henry's hand to get Adam's attention.

"Adam has been airlifted to the hospital. He was alone in the vehicle. It is too soon for investigators to tell if it was foul play. Some people in Adam's inner circle are telling us off the record that he had been suffering debilitating depression lately, and they suspect this might have been a suicide. We can not confirm if this is true.

"For accurate news on Adam's health, we wait for statements from the hospital and head surgeon in attendance. We will keep you updated the moment we have more information. Back to the studio," Patty says to transition the broadcast.

In the bar, Jo swivels back to Abe. "I guess we wait to see if he'll have a miraculous recovery while women lose their babies again."

Her immediate worry is so palpable that Abe puts his hand over hers in comfort. She tries to be strong but takes what he is offering.

"Your baby will be fine. I know it," he says encouragingly.

"You don't _know_ it. You hope it," Jo says, afraid to get to evening again when she'll have to fall asleep. It's not actually the evening she fears. It's the morning and the blood.

Abe pats her hand again in support, but he doesn't know what to say. He moves away to take care of his customers as Jo picks at her food.

* * *

By the early evening, the news has reported that Adam has died, but Jo doesn't know whether to trust it, especially with Henry not returning his calls. The two men are too closely tied together for her not to be nervous.

In the evening, Lucas and Joanna show up at the bar to see Henry and talk about what happened, but Henry hasn't been seen or heard from all day. Jo sits by herself battling the demons of worry and doubt that tell her Henry is in trouble and is never coming home.

"I was at the hospital," Joanna tells her as she sits on the sofa near the chair where Jo sits biting her cuticles nervously.

"Adam _is_ dead. There'll be no resurrections this time," Joanna tells her. Lucas sitting beside Reece nods in agreement.

"How do you know that?" Jo demands.

"You've seen Henry die once," Reece reminds her. "You know he'd disappear from his scene of death and reappear in water. Adam is in the hospital morgue. It's done. The plan worked."

"Where is Henry?" Lucas asks softly.

Jo throws up her hands. "I have no idea. But I wish he'd get here soon!"

An hour later, Henry Morgan comes into the bar as if he's a man on a mission, the tails of his scarf trailing behind him purposefully.

Jo jumps up from her chair and rushes to wrap herself around him. "Where have you been?"

Henry returns her hug and holds her close to him, feeling a true sense of relief. "I was at the hospital. I had to make sure it was true. Really sure."

"So it's over?" Jo asks, tears of many emotions in her eyes.

"Yes," Henry says, taking her face in his and kissing her in celebration. Then he holds her close to him for a very long time before they decide to sit and talk to their friends.

Later, much later after the bar is closed, Jo decides to stay with Henry. They don't have sex and they don't make love. But she tells him this time that he's going to be a father, and they take time to actually dream of a future that they might be able to have together. He holds her as she sleeps, and it is one of the first times in a long time that she doesn't fear nightmares or what the morning brings.


	17. Chapter 17

Life, even for those who have lived very long, is fleeting, built on ephemera. Henry and Jo know his days are numbered. They have defeated the villain of their time and are starting to reap the rewards, but nothing is completely without consequence

A few more weeks pass, and it turns out that Jo is farther along in her pregnancy than she originally thought. They go to a prenatal appointment together, and Henry is able to see the ultrasound of the baby, _his_ baby who will finally get a chance to live because Adam's twisted reign is over. The joy on Henry's face is like a radiant sun.

"It's a little girl," the tech tells them with a smile. "Congratulations."

After the appointment, hey take their photos of the ultrasound results to show their friends, and they start talking about names as they walk away. It is a sweet moment filled with gladness and the hope of a life they could share together as co-parents.

Jo stuffs the photos away into her purse as Henry is telling her some anecdote about his childhoods. While speaking he gets bumped from a passer-by on the street. He loses his balance and falls down, the expression on his face showing confusion that he didn't expect that at all.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," the nondescript man says as he turns to come back to them. "Aren't you Henry Morgan?"

"Yes," he says, putting his hand in the other man's gloved hand as he helps him up.

"Good," the stranger says, putting something in Henry's palm and wrapping his fingers around it. He quickly reaches over to press against the pulse at Henry's neck, too.

"What are you doing?" Jo asks, immediately suspicious.

"Oh, I'm killing him," the assassin says to her calmly. To Henry he adds, "This is from Adam. If he ever died and stayed dead, I was supposed to kill you. Consider this job complete. You may want the last few minutes you have to say goodbye."

The assassin gets up and blends into the crowd leaving Jo and Henry there on the street. Jo is shocked that Henry's murder, his attempted murder, happens so quickly as if it is nothing at all. Just another inconsequential blip in a stream of things where nothing really matters. Then Jo puts all those extra thoughts out of her mind. She drops to the sidewalk beside him.

"No, no, Henry! You can beat this," Jo says as she cradles him in her arms. She strokes his face and starts to cry. "Stay with me, Henry. Stay. Please. We have a daughter to raise together."

He weakly reaches his hands to her to press his fingers against her lips. He can't speak, but he caresses her face tenderly. His moss green eyes are kind as they were when she first met him. He looks at her a moment more and then the light of his eyes leaves. His hand falls away from her face, and he does not disappear to come back again later in water.

Henry Morgan is dead.

Jo Martinez is left alone on the sidewalk crying over his body and waiting for someone to help her.

* * *

"You're here for Jo Martinez?" a gruff voice asks Abe as he's scrambling around the hospital looking for her. He whips around to see a man wearing a name badge that reads Mike Hanson.

"Yes, I am. Where is she?" he asks Mike.

Hanson sighs as if he wants to say something. "You are family, aren't you?"

"Of a sort. Henry Morgan is her baby's father, and he and I…"

Hanson perks up. "I know Henry. They were one of my cases at the Reproductive Center. So they finally got pregnant? Good for them!"

Abe closes his lips and works on his restraint. "I take it you haven't heard. Henry died today. As far as I know that's why she's here."

"Oh, man," Hanson replies in shocked sympathy. "I don't know what to say. I kind of liked the guy, you know? As much as you can like a client."

"May I see her, please?" Abe asks urgently.

"Yes, of course. She's right in 298. Give her my regards, will you?" he says as Abe speeds by to get to Jo.

Inside the room, Jo is inconsolably staring into space. She turns her head when Abe walks in. He rushes to the bed and takes her in his arms. They cling to each other and just cry with bitter, ugly tears and snotty noses.

Jo starts to tell him what happened. "We'd just left the sonogram. We were talking and laughing about names for our daughter and plans for the future. It was so sweet and nice and normal. And now he's… gone."

She sobs again, and Abe holds her close to comfort her. After they have a quiet moment in their shared grief, Abe pulls back and caresses Jo's face, tucking her hair behind her ear.

"We're in this together, Jo. I'm here for you as long as you need me."

She winces with pain. "Why would you do that? You don't owe me anything."

"Because I know that sometimes family is the one you make for yourself, not the one you were born into. I'd like to be a family with you and the baby if you'll have me," Abe says gently, holding her hand in his.

"It's a girl," Jo says with false brightness punctuated by a hiccup.

"Oh, Henry would have loved that. Besides, he already had the best son a man could ask for, even if I do say so myself," Abe says with a fake self-deprecating expression to lighten the mood.

Jo laughs in her tears, but nods at him. "Okay. Together then. I think she'll like having an Uncle Abe."

"I will be the best uncle any baby has ever seen. She is going to be so spoiled!" he says with a twinkle in his eyes. "It seems someone is already getting started."

Turning to see what Abe meant, Jo spies the gift basket in the corner of the room from Lucas and Joanna. "It came from the gift shop. Lucas wanted to focus on the positive part of the day before everything changed. He said he'll stop by later, but I don't know if I'm up for it."

"He's a good boy," Abe says. "So do you have a name in mind yet?"

"Yeah, I do, but it's fairly sentimental," she answers, her cheeks flushing this time with embarrassment.

"Are you going to keep me in suspense and wait until she's born, or are you going to tell me her name now?" he asks enthusiastically.

"I'll name her Shawna Morgan Martinez, but I'll call her Morgan," Jo says.

"It's a good name," he says softly. "I'm sure she'll be a beautiful girl."

"Yeah," Jo says, still clinging to Abe. Then she thinks to ask, "Are you okay? Henry was your father."

"No. No, I'm not," Abe admits. "But that's how it goes."

"Yeah, it is," Jo replies.

When Jo feels better, she and Abe leave the hospital. Her friends and new family gather around her to deal with the loss of Henry. He had been so private but in the end had affected so many. It is an odd celebration of the end of one life and the start of a new one.

Jo stays to share space and time with Abe. Eventually, she will move in with him and raise her daughter with him. He will be the father figure Henry never got to be the second time around. One day Abe and Jo will both feel less raw about the loss of Henry, but that day is a very long time coming.

Though Henry Morgan is gone, a tangible part of him remains. He finally has the one thing for him that he never thought possible—a child of his own. In the very near future, she will become part of the crazy world her parents have known, and maybe it will be better for her than it was for them. Only time knows for sure.


End file.
